Posts tagged “THE LEGEND OF PINE RIDGE”

I have posted on this before. I thought maybe it was something new…Richard Two Elk the man who wrote the forward to AMERICAN INDIAN MAFIA also makes videos. This is being put up again for SNAPPLE who runs the THE LEGEND OF PINE RIDGE blog. After watching it again I still have the same opinion….after the video…

I have several problems with this video…Richard Two Elks supposedly owns and produces videos yet he doesn’t know not to wear a hat on camera…indoors either as far as I am concerned. I was raised that it is disrespectful. Another thing that bothers me is that Richard Two Elks never speaks confidently into the camera…he hides his face and is always looking down at a prepared statement he also mumbles and slurs. It was a bizarre video the first time I watched it and still is. Richard Two Elks was at Wounded Knee II he knows who everyone is and the history….I still get names confused…but I can tell you what I know and believe….looking you in the eye confident that I am true to my feelings and in my beliefs based on what I know…But as I said this might be a difference between whites and Indians?? I am not trying to be mean but the video lacks passion and conviction for the subject never mind that I do not agree with all that is in the video….

Because I have read many other things by Richard Two Elk….I have a hard time believing that these are his words…this is how Richard Two Elks usually writes in some weird voice. This is a comment to me for posting the SNAPPLE post on alt.native

so…why da hill ya postin it hear?…

not nuff room onyer Clog, i meanz…blog…?

please refrain from redundant posting of content which may be read
elsewhere, in it’s entirety, IF anyone should want…

Like I said it may be a difference between whites and Indians…but Monica Charles doesn’t speak like that…its weird like he has to create another personality for???

I could be wrong but I was raised in a very conservative home and while I am quite liberal in my political views…I mostly carry quite conservative values and this man really bothers me…

One of the other things that bothers me about Richard Two Elks is that he admits to hanging a man on a cross and beating him…I know he was young but he was never charged by the FBI and speaks of the incident in the forward he wrote(?) to Special Agent Joseph Trimabach’s book AMERICAN INDIAN MAFIA. I am a huge believer that all laws should be for all people….while I may not be happy with the prison system in the United States…I believe that run correctly it should be a place where people are held accountable for their actions…I think it is a necessary step to healing all parties involved.I think that people either rise to the occasion or remain unable to confront the horror of what they have done and thus are never able to be totally free. I do not believe that informers involved in crimes should get lesser sentences than those they have informed on…I do think that it should be a consideration after remorseful behavior and parole is being considered. Richard Two Elk reminds me of someone who is not proud of who he has become.

There are a lot of accusations flung about on alt.native and I try not to pay attention to the ones that are just insults being flung around…there are a lot….one of the accusations being hurled around for awhile was that the “real victims” of Wounded Knees were those whose homes were destroyed and that the occupiers of Wounded Knee should sew blankets. Some write like the people are living in cardboard boxes not with no blankets or food….Wounded Knee seems to be a very emotional and sacred site, there was a movement of Indians who were being repressed by the government State and Federal….they thought quite mistakenly that a group of individuals with a few rifles were a match for for the United States government…and like Japan-they were wrong.

The appropriate response after Wounded Knee would have been for the governor at the time to declare an emergency ask for Federal money in order for the owners to rebuild….if this was not done? Shame should be on our government.

The video is very one sided and while Richard Two Elk claims PBS neglected to tell the death of a black supporter at Wounded Knee.. he fails to mention that he hung someone on a cross and beat them to death…this person has disappeared and apparently he changes his story…AIM took him….the FBI took him…??? This is a man who the FBI has chosen as their spokes person on AIM and Wounded Knee. Further more this video fails to mention the abuse and murder of Indian children on Pine Ridge…a little girls eye was shot out. Houses and cars were routinely shot up….even some of the lawyers for the occupiers were beaten. A young woman named Jancita Eagle Deer was raped by the future Governor…He was disbarred by the tribal courts…but the FBI was so racist against Indians that they did not consider the tribal judge to be legitamate….because he was Indian?? There are so many twists and turns to this story I encourage all of you who are interested to read THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks. He seems to be unbiased and often criticizes or praises both the FBI and AIM.

The fact of the matter is PBS could do a five part series on Wounded Knee II and never be able to cover all of the finger pointing and accusations. The murder of Anna Mae Aquash alone has more whodunnit theories than CARTERS HAS LIVER PILLS!

My solution to all of this is to either let it drop or to put every single person under sodium penethol or hook them up to lie detector tests…every FBI agent, BIA workers…all of the major characters on Pine Ridge…in AIM…FBI informants…even with all of that peoples faulty memories probably still wouldn’t be enough to find out what really happened.